


It's Cruel Indeed, To Put a Passion In Her And Then Punish Her for It.

by Iamasortofvillain



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamasortofvillain/pseuds/Iamasortofvillain
Summary: A messy college au where Heloise is only strong for her mother's sake, Marianne has trouble painting happiness and Sophie, as best friends usually does, knows it all.
Relationships: Héloïse & Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 101





	It's Cruel Indeed, To Put a Passion In Her And Then Punish Her for It.

**Author's Note:**

> She Sings Like a Falling Angel Might Sing With The Bounds of Heaven Fresh Burst Behind Him, And Hell Still Distant And Unguessed.

i.

Heloise doesn't mind the rumors spreading through out campus. She doesn't mind her mother calling, late at night, just to make some foul point and hang up in a fury. She doesn't mind the dark looks, the hateful comments. She doesn't mind the dreams, that start coming, three weeks after her sister is burried in the soft ground of the family estate and her stone is set neatly above.

She doesn't mind her stomach turning. She doesn't mind the people staring. She doesn't mind her heart breaking.

She crosses the yard, every Friday, with her back straight and her eyes fierce, some small gift dangling about in an old paper bag she carries in her hand.

(More often than not it's a bottle of red wine. Sometimes it's a box of chocolates. Sometimes it's a neatly rolled blunt).

She doesn't turn her head when someone's calling her name. she doesn't linger. She walk; fast and in long strides, like a woman who's mind is set on a goal, closing the distance between her shabby little dorms and the huge grey building of the art faculty.

(Her mind isn't set on anything. She just longs to escape).

(She doesn't really know what she's running from. When she sees Marianne's face, though – the thick brows, the small mouth, the green eyes – she thinks she must be running towards, and not from).

(When Marianne is wrapping her in a hug, arms warm and strong and trembling, long nose digging into the tender flesh between her neck and shoulder, asking about her day, her classes, her feelings – Heloise closes her eyes and breaths her in).

(She longs to be understood. In Marianne's arm, she finds out that she is).

ii.

Her pictures are sad. Sad and dark and full of heartbreak. They are painted with wild strokes, with thick oils, with lots of blues and greys and sometimes, with yellows and reds, mixing all together, for a blazing fire.

Her pictures weren't like this when she first got into university. Her works were clean and right and followed hundred different rules that made her feel like a canary in a cage.

(They had the right composition).

(They had neat strokes).

(They had no life).

Her instructor creases his brows, cocks his head to the side and worries his lower lip between his teeth. His chin is smooth and shining from shaving. His eyes have lost their fire.

"Is this how you feel?" he asks tenderly. He's a small man, the top of his head barely reaches her shoulder. When he looks at her, back stretched and face tilted up, she feels clumsy.

Marianne looks at him, bewilderd. "feels?" she says it as if she's tasting the word for the first times.

(As if she doesn’t understand).

He looks at her the same way her father used to look at her when she was smaller;

(Eyebrows knitted together. Lips turned into a thin line).

(The look her father gave her when she made the right choice for the wrong reason).

"Have you ever tried painting something you love?"

"Love? Is this what paintings all about?"

He doesn't answer.

She tries his approach anyway.

iii.

"Like this?" Heloise throws her arms above her head and Marianne laughs and laughs and laughs.

The sound is all wrong in the small studio. Like laughing in prison. Or in a morgue.

"Be serious." She says, sternly.

(The smile that's still tugging at the corner of her lips does nothing to ruin the impact of her words).

A line forms between Heloise's brows and she rearranges herself on the sofa. "Tell me again." She demands.

Marianne smiles gently at her. She draws faint lines on the painted canvas, her hands shaking with desire. She looks at Heloise and than, because she cannot bare the intensity of the other woman's stare, and because she cannot look at her without wanting to touch her, she turns her eyes quickly back to the painted sheet in front of her.

Heloise is impatient, like a child.

"Tell me".

Marianne's still secretly smiling, head bent, trying to concentrate on the right way to capture Heloises rough sketch on the stiff fabric. Her pencil makes sharp sounds.

Heloise stares on.

"Tell me".

Marianne's heart pounding hard against the inside of her chest.

"What's the point?" She says. "You'll just find something else that might be wrong with it".

"Tell me anyway".

(Marianne thinks that her problem might be lying in the simple fact that she cannot seem to refuse Heloise in anything).

"No".

(She tells her anyway).

iv.

Heloise shakes and shakes and shakes. She curls her fingers into fists. Her palms are sweating.

The small room is dark and stuffed with hot air. Her bed is made, and her desk is clean. No clothes are hanging from the back of her chair.

Still, her mother's disapproving gaze makes her all too aware of all the little imperfections around her.

(The uneven folds in the covers. The paint on the surface of the desk).

"Stop it." She says through gritted teeth.

Her mother aims for tender, but it comes out confused. "You cannot be seriously considering this".

(In another life, Heloise could have been a perfect, younger copy, of her mother. They have the same blonde hair, the same blue eyes, the same proud wretched stubbornness).

(In this life, however, even the samllest resemblance looses it's power in the face of their fundemental disparity).

"I love her".

"It doesn't matter".

"I don't love him".

"Have I ever talked about love?"

"Than you rather have me do your bidding than see me happy?"

Her mother stares (she stares and stares and stares and Heloise wonders if she understands the meaning of the word).

"Happy?" Her mother chokes out. "I want you to be happy," she says it in a sad sort of tone, her voice is small and broken. "Don't you know that? I want you to be happy, more than anything in the world".

Heloise stumbles back. She looks (and looks and looks) until suddenly, as if out of nowhere, and for the first time, she sees the woman in front of her.

Suddenly, she realises that this woman is the very same woman who have lost her child, only a few weeks ago.

She stands tall and proud, her face fixed in a grave expression, and her hair shines in the cold sunlight, but her shoulders are slightly slumped and there are new lines around her mouth. She looks, if not older, than maybe sadder. Less rigid than before.

Heloise studies her carefully. Her mother looks like a woman who's carrying the whole world on her shoulders.

(It hits upon her in that moment, that she very well might be doing just that).

She wants to hug her. She wants to apologise and cry and shake her. She wants to tell her that she's not alone.

What she says is this.

"I don't know what you want me to do. I don't know how to fix this".

Her mother's eyes survey the room twice, before she meets her daughters gaze. When she does, there is infinite sorrow in her dark blue eyes. Sorrow – and regret.

"What do you imagine needs your fixing?"

"This," Heloise gestures miserably with her hand to the empty air between them. Her eyes prick with unspilled tears. Her lip starts to quiver. "All this".

(Don't cry, she tells herself. Don't cry. Don't cry).

Her mother hangs her head low, and sighs and sighs and sighs.

When she finally looks up again, she says, "I'm sorry, darling." And means something else entirely.

(Heloise doesn't know if she apologises for asking, or for pushing, or for giving up).

v.

Before Heloise, there was a string of warm bodies, of smiling-at-nothing faces, of meaningless gifts and hushed whisperes and locked doors.

Before Heloise, there was cold coffee in take-away paper cups, long nights at the library, ever changing sheets.

(There were wandering hands, there were sour mouths, there were blank faces).

Before Heloise, there was no space in her studio, no meaning to the turning and ticking of the great clock above the door, no point to applying oil paint to the white surface of a new canvas.

Before Heloise, words meant nothing. Music meant nothing.

(Sex meant even less).

vi.

Heloise props herself on her elbow and looks at Marianne. Her eyes are shining. Soft and loving and peaceful. Her mouth curls into a small smile.

The room is cold and bright in the mid-morning light.

(It's a small space, with little to non furniture, naked walls and wooden floors).

The covers are messy and warm, and tangles all about them, covering them both. Heloise's chest is bare and her honey-blonde hair sticks out in all directions. Marianne lies on her side, hips curved, one arm supporting her head.

"How peaceful you look," Heloise says, eyes gleaming. "Just like this".

Marianne smiles a secret smile, one that only Heloise gets to see. It lights her eyes in a wonderful kind of light that chaces away her usually haunted look.

She reaches out and smooths Heloise's hair with long, steady fingers.

"And how beautiful, you".

Dark eyebrows, above bright blue eyes, jump in an involuntary tick. A familiar line formes between them – small crease that Marianne aches and aches to smooth. Heloise licks her lips, opens her mouth as if to say something, and then, after giving it a second thought, closes it.

In couple of weeks time, Marianne learned that some expressions mean absolutly nothing, so she waits. And she watches.

Finally, Heloise musters up enough courage and says, in a rather flat tone, "My mother visited me yesterday".

"Here? On campus?"

Heloise nods gravely. The small single wrinkle between her eyebrows is still there. Her mouth forms an angry line. All tenderness leaves her. Her shoulders tenses.

"Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing I can fix".

Marianne takes Heloise's hand in both her own and plays with her fingers, absentmindedly, anxiously waiting for the rest.

"She dropped the idea of me marrying my sister's fiance".

(That's something Marianne heard of but never quite understood. Now, however, she only nods. Carefully and tentatively, as to not set Heloise off).

Heloise bites on her bottom lip. "What I mean to say is…" she hesitates, worries the idea in her mouth, chewing on unspoken words. "What I'm saying is..." she fidgets with Marianne's fingers, working her mouth a few times. Then she says, very fast,

"I'm saying that I'm staying for the next semester".

(What she means is: I'm staying with you).

Marianne wants to ask fourty different questions but locks her jaws tight and bited her tongue.

(She wants to know everything, and dares to ask nothing).

Instead, what she says is, "Political science?"

(She means to say: i love you).

"Hmm".

Marianne lifts herself up slowly. The sheet that's been covering her slips down a little and cold air touches her skin. Goosbumps rise all over her, and she gives a small shiver.

When she's sitting upright, Heloise studies her, a different expression on her face. She traces with her eyes all over Marianne's naked torso. Her eyes are darker now. She breathes slowly through her mouth.

"Don't move".

Marianne is sitting very still. Heloise rises and moves on her knees towards her. She cups her hand behind Marianne's head and pulls her into a kiss. The kiss is wet and sloppy with desire. Heloise's mouth is cold but soon gets warmer. So warm it feels like burning.

Slippery tongue pushes against Marianne's lips and she opens her mouth, hungry and wanting and desperate.

"Don't move." Heloise says again, her mother quite forgotten now.

Marianne nods her head, though she doesn’t really know to what exactly.

vii.

"What do you mean 'people talk about us'?" Heloise lets out a small, humorless laugh that is everything but amused. "Who even gives enough shit to talk about... us?"

The small coffee shop, just outside school grounds, is packed with caffeine deprived bodies; tired university students, slick looking businessmen and two or three families, on their way back from a sunday at the park.

Heloise's voice is loud and confident. Her words carry on in the noisy little shop and makes couple or heads turn her way.

Sophie's eyes become round and huge and she slides a few centimeters down in her chair. "Good lord." She murmurs while hiding her face behind her cup of coffee as she sips on her sweet as syrup drink.

Marianne smiles a proud smile, her cheeks hot and flushed and her fingers druming a happy tune on the surface of the sticky table. She turns her face to Sophie and rises her eyebrows in curiosity, as if to say 'well?'

"Well…" Sophie chokes on her coffee. "It's just that both of you are so… Tall. And, well… popular. And handsome".

Heloises rises her eyebrows.

"And you're very hard to miss on your own, what with the hair and the eyes and..." she trails off.

Marianne is beaming at her. Heloise, though she stares and stares and stares, schools her features into a kinder expression.

Sophie takes a big breath.

"All i'm saying is that together you just look…" she waves her hand in a desperate sort of way and makes Heloise gaze harder and Marianne laugh louder.

"Breathe." Marianne suggests gently and Sophie hangs her head and looks like she's about to pass out.

"I don't understant." Says Heloise. She points a finger at Sophie, who still hides her face. "What does it mean? Who is talking?" She turns her face to Marianne. "Why?"

Sophie leans into Marianne and lets her wrap her in a comforting one-arm hug. The stiff chair is digging into her side, but she doesn't move.

"I made a mistake telling you." She says in a low voice, her eyes fixed on Heloise. "It isn't a bad thing".

"It isn't?"

Marianne rubs her palm on Sophie's shoulder, working up warmth into her.

"It was a mistake, wasn't it?" Sophie chuckles lightly.

Marianne smiles tenderly. "It probably was." She says.

Heloise sips on her cooling coffee and watches the tender display of love in front of her.

"I don't understant." She says again, in a bewildered sort of way. "I don't understand".

viii.

Before Marianne there were nights of endless outbursts, and meaningless talks and mixed drinks.

Before Marianne there were delayed papers and stained notes and dark rooms with devilish computer lights.

Before Marianne, there were curious questions, directed at the wrong people, unsteady fingers between her own legs, expensive clothes and annoying half-friends with narrow views on music and broad views on drugs.

Before Marianne, Heloise felt empty and cold, as if she was asleep while wide awake.

Before Marianne, Heloise met awful sort of people, with terrible sort of ideas and questionable sort of goals.

Before Marianne, she was dying; hungry and desperate and wanting.

Now she has Marianne – she feels like flying.

ix.

"You turned them down?" Heloise says it in a disbelieving sort of way. Her breathing comes rapid. Her eyes are wide and wet with tears.

"Yes".

"Why?" Heloise creases her eyebrows. "Didn't you want this job? I thought you said you were - "

"There are things I want more, and they are right here." Marianne's tone is quiet and honest and scared. She looks into Heloise's face, searching for disapproval. Or disappointment.

There are none. Heloise stares at her, openly and with amazement in her eyes.

"So that means you get to stay? Really stay?" She smiles her big smile and her whole face lights up like a christmas tree. She looks so young and so happy and so beautiful, Marianne feels like her chest is about to explode.

(It's amazing, really, how Heloise can go from looking so dark and gloomy, to looking so bright and perky in less than five seconds).

(Marianne aches and aches and aches, with love).

"You're staying," Heloise has her hands on Marianne's shoulders. "You really are staying." She shakes her exitedly untill her teeth rattle.

"I'm not going anywhere" Marianne say and then she kisses her.

x.

It isn't perfect.

Some days it's like nothing can harm their happiness. They laugh and dance and kiss. They paint, and play guitar and kiss and kiss and kiss. They watch movies on Marianne's computer, they eat too much junk food. They drink too much wine.

They visit Sophie in her off-campus apartment and build small shelters for birds.

Heloise sucks at helping around with any kind of chore, but sometimes she'll make a half-hearted attempt at cleaning and (Marianne takes small wins like that with a smile and a kiss).

It isn't perfect.

Sometimes Heloise flinches at the sound of someone shouting outside. Sometimes she kisses Marianne and tastes like tears and alcohol and the kiss stings Marianne but there is nothing she can do to make Heloise feel better.

On bad days, Heloise calls her mother and weeps and weeps and weeps for a sister she will never hug again. Marianne tries her best, but she doesn't know that sort of grief so she settles for tender kisses and tear stained sweatshirts.

On bad days Marianne's chest feels tight and she is ready to fight heaven and hell for the chance to see Heloise's smile again.

"I want to help," she says one night. She has her arms around Heloise, the inside of her thighs still slick and wet from before. "Tell me how to help you".

Heloise shakes her head and kisses her, sad and desperate and broken.

"I don't know," she says, her eyes puffy, her lips swollen. "I don't know".

Marianne smooths her hair and calms her with gentle kisses and when her breath hitches, she hugs her tight and lets her count her heartbeats.

Heloise says, "I'm sorry, i'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should be braver".

(Marianne's heart breaks for her).

xi.

On good days they are young and in love and Sophie watches them with endless tenderness in her eyes and a soft smile.

They look gorgeous together, leaning on each others arms, heads hung close, eyes seeing nothing but their lover.

They sit on the grass, two tall figures with stuning features and weird habbits. They talk about music and books. They argue lovingly about thousand year old myths, laugh about silly poems, gaze into each others eyes. Marianne paints and paints and paints Heloise, as if trying to capture her in hundred different poses, on hundred different occasions.

Sophie sees it for what it really is.

"She isn't going anywhere, you know." Sophie tells her one night. Heloise is sound asleep on Marianne's bed, in their small dorm-room apartment. She looks like a child, dreaming peacefully about far off lands.

Sophie sips on red wine while Marianne turn off the movie they've been watching on her computer. They sit on the floor, legs stretched before them.

Marianne watched Heloise carefully.

"I know".

"Do you?" Sophie says it in a soft kinda way. She touches Marianne's arm gently.

Marianne turns her face from Heloise.

"I know".

Sophie hugs her tight. She's small but her arms are strong. She smells like vanila and alcohol.

"You're still scared. And you're not letting yourself love her properly".

"I love her as best I know".

"You love her as if any day might be your last. It's intense and scary and you're gonna break".

"I wasn't planning on breaking".

Sophie raises one eyebrow but doesn't change their possision. When she lets Marianne go, her dark chocolate eyes are troubled.

"What is it?"

"I don't want you to break".

Marianne touches her forehead, rubbs her fingertips to the skin above her eyebrows.

"Am I, though?" she says in a whisper.

Sophie leans and kisses her cheek. "she's not going anywhere without you." She says again.

xii.

And she isn’t.

xiii.

When Marianne kisses Heloise, she thinks she knows how is feels, to paint love.

xiv.

When Heloise kisses Marianne, she definitely knows what happiness tastes like.

+i.

She knows she shouldn't but she can't stop herself. So she looks.

The isle is packed with people, men and women searching for places to sit, but there isn't any sign that Marianne is among them.

Heloise turns her face back, smoothes the front of her dress. Composes herself.

"Stop fidgeting," Sophie tells her with an excited smile. She's been smilling for the last two hours. A big, bright, happy smile that warms Heloise's heart. "You'll spoil your dress".

"How much longer?" Heloise moves from one foot to the other. The dress makes a gentle rustle. Her palms started sweating.

Her mother, just a little to the left of her, rises her eyebrows. She's also smilling, though her smile grows almost fearful now.

Heloise catches her eye and gives a shiver. She mouths, "what?" But her mother averts her eyes. She's watching someone else, someone who must be coming down the isle, behind Heloise's back.

The laughter and calls change to murmurs. Then to complete silence.

Sophie digs her fingers into Heloise's arm and squeals.

Heloise own heartbeats seem to fill her. she pulses from the tip of her toes to the top of her head.

The hush goes on and on and on and she thinks she knows what they might be seeing. What Sophie's so excited about. What her mother is watching with such an earnest parental fright.

The crowd breaks in an easy, lovely, sort of murmur. It grows louder, turns almost into a moan.

Heloise feels her heart leap in her chest. She can taste her own moan growing louder in her throat.

"Come on..." She has to fight against the growl that builds inside her.

"Come on. C'mon. C'mon." She murmurs, to no one in particular.

Sophie beams at her.

"She's beautiful." She informs her and Heloise feels like the world is swooning. (And maybe, after all, she might faint).

(She doesn't).

"Here comes the bride." Sophie sing-songs next to Heloise. She's jumping slightly on her tiptoes, excited. Her voice is choked with happy tears. Her face is spliting into a huge smile.

And then, and then, and then – then comes the moment – just a single moment – of complete terror. Of perfect, awful stillness. People hold their breaths and Heloise is thinking that she knows what comes next.

She closes her eyes for a moment. She feels Sophie's fingers digging ever so slightly, into the flesh of her arm. She is sure she gonna have a nasty bruise tomorrow.

(At this moment, tomorrow seems like a feverish dream to her).

"Ready?" Sophie asks.

Heloise nods. Once. She opens her eyes and her stomach gives a turn.

Behind her, Marianne leans forward and touches her fingers to Heloise's back. She can feel how hot Marianne's hand is even through the thick fabric of her dress.

She gasps.

"Turn around." Marianne says in her reach voice.

And then – she does.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys liked it.  
> English is not my first language, so be gentle with me.


End file.
